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Sunday, January 23, 2011

An NDN Insight - Chris Olpin

This week's NDN Insight is with loooong-time blader, Christopher Olpin.

Check out the brand new section of Olpin after the interview!

photo by cameron card.

1.How long have you been blading and how'd you get into it?

i have been blading since 95 and for an old man like me, that's 16 years. I got into rollerblading through an old friend of mine Chad Potter, he had a cousin from Cali who was a pro vert skater, so every time Chad went out to Cali, he would skate with his cousin at Ventura Skatepark, he would come back home and show me the footage of them skating and that would just put me in awe on how badass rollerblading looked, so Chad ended up taking me with him to watch a NISS competition in Salt lake, I remember seeing Jaren Grob and Chris Edwards killin it and from that point on, i had to get me a pair of jams, which were the chocolates size 12, lol big old chocolate blades with some army pants to go along with it. Every morning, were talkin 7 a.m. we set the camera turn up the boom box blastin to some Tupac, and practice flips onto a mattress with his 2 foot little homemade ramp, eventually we moved on from the mattress and took it to the sidewalk and decided to make a sponsor tape, to ride for Jnco jeans, lol when I look back at it now I think when Jnco watched the video they felt bad and sent us some pants and stickers for our efforts, but then we definitely thought we were team Jnco...some good old days

2.Do you ever get "Hey! You're the guy from Scarred that ripped his dick open!"? If so, how do you react?

Ya when that show aired, I had some strange encounters, for instance I went down to AZ with the SLC crew and stayed the weekend at James and Gretchen's, owners of Revolution Skate Shop, to get some good old sunshine bladin in and one of the nights I went to an ASU party and a group of dudes start pointing at me and whispering shit, at that point I'm thinkin oh no for some reason these guys are going to beat the bajesus out of me, one of them yelled out ''hey you, get over here" so now I'm freakin out, i head over there and one of them says "we were just at some bar and we saw some guy on MTV Scarred who looks just like you, was that you? I told them ya I'm that guy and they picked me up screaming "get this kid a beer, he's the dude who severed his junk from Scarred," I thought that was really strange being in AZ at a random party and having people recognize me from that. I also had a guy fix my cracked window for free as long as i took a picture with him to prove to his wife that he met me, lolouder lots of strange encounters from that show.

3.You had an injury last year that not everyone knows about...what happened?

well last april 2010 I was filmin for your video and I wanted to get a line on these rails at U of U campus, switch mistrial the first rail and regular mistrial the second, that line didn't go as planned instead it went switch mistrial to straight face plant, and there I was on my knees with my top teeth knocked out and one sticking out through my lip, dripping blood everywhere, I will never forget at that moment when Beastmaster asked me if I had insurance and instantly having a flash back of all these years paying out garnishments of 350+ out of each pay check to pay off my hospital debt, I was one month away from finishing that off and were talking close to 40,000 in medical bills, my whole world went into a downword spiral, I couldn't believe, I was going to go through that again, but with the help of some donations and especially Chase Bailey loaning me a lets just say very large amount to cut the bills in half, I should be out of this mess by the end of next year. to let everyone know i ended up breaking my jaw in four places had to have a surgery, where they inserted a metal plate to seal my jaw back together along with having my mouth wired shut for almost 2 months, pretty intense

4.Your secret comeback has been pretty epic! What made you put the blades back on? What made it a secret?

well its so hard for me to stay away from rollerblading, I love it to much, no matter what I have been through I cant get away from it, when i rollerblade it makes all the everyday life and struggles that we all go through just seem to go away, the feeling is almost inexpressible to put words to, i just love it.

5.Why don't you have a skate sponsor?!?!

I don't know but since the comeback I have tried skating USD, Rollerblade, and now rockin the Razors and I must say these skates are the best things I've been on in all my years of skating so Razors if your reading this hint hint hit me up....

6.You and Cameron have fed off each other's blading for yeaaars now. What makes you two a match-made-in-heaven?

Cam and I have been blading since the 90's, and what makes us skate so well is the fact pure and simple, Cam kills it and when I see him lace a trick, I feed off that energy and lace a trick and the positive energy goes on and on, Cameron also has a secret method when I'm trying something new, I remember years back we were at this rail and i wanted to hurricane back royale it, I've never done one before, so I try spinning over the rail and landing in the grass to see if I could even pull it off, well Cam says "dude you totally have it" so a few try's later, I end doing it, but to my surprise Cams tells me that he lied and it looked like there was no way of that trick happening, lol so he has this psycho logic way of tricking my brain into doing things that I think I Cant do.

7.What are you up to when you aren't blading?

when I'm not blading I'm spending time with my girlfriend and fam, playin guitar, fly fishin, and golfing, none of those I am good at but it sure is a dandy old time, I also work a full time job and a morning part time job to get this medical debt out of my life so i can get some firkin health insurance.....

8.Any plans to come to Boise soon? I haven't seen you since Cameron's wedding...

well well well we will have to make some plans this summer and do it up in Boise my good man

9.Other than The Olp-Gulp, what is key to a successful session?

its simple don't fall and a clip a day keeps the doctor away....

10.You got any hopes/plans for 2011?

my plans are to get out of debt and create wealth and happiness in all areas in my life....